Rescuing A Dog

by annafullbrook on April 10, 2014

This week I started the patient, slow small steps towards integrating a new member of the family, we are taking in a 3rd rescue dog. She, Trixie has been to what we would consider, hell and back. Used as a breeding dog for profit for 6 years and then passed around from person to person, some of which took out their inadequacies on her. As a result of humans, she has been left with issues of fouling when scared and howling when left on her own, and to add insult to her injuries, she was nearly put to sleep. So when the human who was trying to help her got in touch with me, there was no question about what needed to be done and where she was going to end up, and that was here with us. Trixie is now almost 9 years old, she is a small Jack Russell who is not angry with the world, just frightened of it, she doesn’t have an aggressive or bitter bone in her body.

Her issues don’t worry me, I’m going into this with my eyes wide open, I appreciate that her troubled mind could take her a very very long time to change, I know this could get messy, quite literally and I appreciate that my 2 other dogs are going to have to adjust. Non of this fazes me, on the contrary, her life and what she has been through makes it important to me, that she lives the remainder of her life being loved, feeling safe and secure and the opportunity to know who she really is inside that tiny little body, not what us humans force her to be.

The first slow steps this week have all been about meeting up with Trixie and the foster human, going for walks in the park and introducing Asbo and Rosie-Moomoo, which has gone very well.

Next week, I go to the foster human, collect Trixie to take her out with us, so that she can get to know me and then eventually take the baby steps, towards walking her in through the garden gate, and eventually into the house.

This journey is about Trixie, on her terms, in her time and I feel incredibly privileged that I am being given the opportunity to do this with her. I have fallen madly in love with her and look forward to sharing some photos with you.